In recent years stores have shifted from using paper bags to using plastic shopping bags for packing one's purchases. Plastic shopping bags tend to predominate, although paper bags are still available. A problem associated with carrying heavily laden plastic shopping bags is that their handles can irritate or even cut one's hands. This is more common among city dwellers where the individual has to carry their purchases over a long distance. Most merchants supplying plastic shopping bags do not provide their customers with any device to protect the customer's hands from irritation caused by carrying loaded plastic shopping bags.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,356,190 Torres discloses a plastic bag handguard which is a folded sheet of plastic that contains a trough which retains the handles of plastic shopping bags, and which fits in a user's hand, protecting the hand against the weight of the loaded shopping bag. However, if the user wants to use more than one of these devices, they must be carried individually, in contrast to the present invention where two handguards are attached to each other and readily separable from each other.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,263,755 Thompson describes a portable carrier for bags which has an elongated handle connected to a hinge and a parabola-shaped carrier section which is retained in the handle by a spring-loaded pull pin. In this device the handle is held in the user's hand, and the plastic bags are retained on the carrier section.
Stewart describes a handle for carrying plastic shopping bags in U.S. Pat. No. 4,923,235. The rigid elongate handle fits in a user's hand, and has a notch in each end to retain the straps of the shopping bag.
The present invention is a leather handguard that fits in a user's palm, and is designed for protecting the user's hands from irritation caused by carrying heavily laden plastic shopping bags. The present invention can be also used to carry other items having handles, such as paint cans or joint compound, items tied with string such as bundles of tied-up papers, etc.